Even in his undergraduate days, Stephen O’Connell had a feeling his career as an economist wouldn’t focus on traditional concerns such as finance, asset pricing and interest rates.
“I just found myself thinking about those macro theories in terms of the problems that I was concerned with: social or economic inequality, challenges faced by people on a micro level,” says O’Connell, now an associate professor in Emory’s Department of Economics. “That’s why I like field work. Going to a place and talking to people, learning from them and understanding their problems in a humanizing sense, gives a fuller sense of reality than the strict and rigid view of how people make rational decisions. The world that we describe in [economic] models is not always the world that exists.”
Stephen O'Connell in Beirut
“There are things that happen in places like that, that are either not predicted or outside the possibilities of traditional labor market theory,” he says.
“The populations I've worked with have been forcibly displaced people fleeing war. They arrive in another country. Whether they’re allowed there legally is a gray area. There are constraints on the ability to work; they can’t find a formal job. And there are populations that are essentially barred from regular work ‘on the books.’ You see a breakdown of the normal social cohesion that allows employers and workers to trust each other.”
In Lebanon, investigating a program aimed at refugee families from Syria, O’Connell found cash transfers helped families with food security and children’s well-being in the short run, but the improvement didn’t last. Without the money, families reverted to prior consumption levels within six months. In Iraq, he’s studying a program that gives $2,000 in aid to displaced people. Does the money improve social cohesion in this post-conflict environment? Does it help others with ties to the direct beneficiaries?
Government administrators have used the insights from O’Connell’s work to help make assistance programs more effective. His work in Syrian refugees in Lebanon found ways to help administer the program more efficiently and target financial aid more precisely. Another study showed that targeting aid at people with different kinds of needs — poor nutrition or low consumption, for example — didn’t change the effectiveness of the program, but, unexpectedly, the effects were very different in different neighborhoods. Discoveries from his most recent study, focused on how financial aid helps rebuild social cohesion, have already been shared with aid agencies in many different parts of the world.
O’Connell makes a point of bringing Emory undergraduates, whom he calls “incredibly bright” and “fun to work with,” into his research. He encourages his mentees to pursue long-term projects, so that they can dig into the experience.
Zachary Etzioni, a junior majoring in math and economics, spent the last academic year helping O’Connell develop a survey to measure the precise combination of needs and circumstances that persuades immigrants to leave their home country.
Zach Etzioni, a math and economics major
Etzioni says his study with O’Connell has inspired to pursue his own academic career: “I’ve never felt more intellectually stimulated than I have on this project,” he says.
Lucy Liu, an undergraduate economics major, says working with O’Connell has given her “a place to dive deeper into what displaced people are experiencing and how business grants can affect people’s social cohesion. Will they have more trust in the community? Will they have more competition?” Over time, she learned how social assistance programs can change people’s lives.
Lucy Liu, who is majoring in economics
In the two years she spent on the project, Liu saw her interests grow from research methods alone to understanding what the numbers mean for issues of social responsibility. The result, perhaps, of O’Connell’s way of working with students.
“I don’t think most of them need mentoring,” he says. “They need something to start on, something that they can build on. I know how I would do it, but I’m going to give that question to you, and we’ll go from there.” The result, he says: “I learn as much practical or interesting or useful stuff from them as they could possibly learn from me.”